The first quarter-century of my life

This month I turned into 25. To be specific, it had already more than 2 weeks ago since my 25th birthday. if I think about this moment, I have lived long enough and met the first quarter century of my life. Quite an accomplishment, don’t you think? Some people had unfortunate conditions that made them won’t be able to meet their 25. So, I’m really grateful for having a chance to live long enough until now.

I don’t usually announce or celebrate my birthday in the internet. However, I think the age of 25 is one of the ages when people start thinking and questioning about their life. Some even have achieved what they want in life in this early moment. So, I decided to put my thought in this writing before I got too late.

My thoughts on being 25

It’s an inevitable being older. After all, time always moves forward and you cannot return to the state you have left behind. Moreover, time moves faster than you ever realize. Suddenly, you will find yourself already close at the age of 30 or even 40 and realize the reality state you’re currently in.

I too realized my life went so fast after the beginning of my 20s and when I realized, the age counter went into 25. The good part is I’m still on the track of being a full-fledged adult. At least in my own standard.

The age of 21 was the first time I entered a professional world by working as an intern at consultant company. At the age of 22, I finished my thesis and successfully graduated from the university. I did my 2nd internship after graduated and finally landed on my first full-time job in the age of 23. Not really bad to start my professional career. However, after turned into a 25, I started to ask myself about my career. Until how long I will keep working on this field? Should I start a side hustle or a small business that supports my career? Instead of me working everyday, how do I make money works to me by earning passive income? That kind of questions start to fill my thought in my free time. I cannot answer those questions now, but I will start to plan to achieve what I want to do in the near future.

People say 20s are the crucial moments in your entire life. From the start of this decade, we start entering the adulthood and every decision that we make on this moment can influence and change the way we grow up. From the way we make money, how we socialize with people, lifestyle, behavior, and etc. Many things can affect the development of our growth and create who we will be.

It’s really such a roller coaster moment when one correct or wrong move can rapidly change your life. Many people usually don’t realize this moment earlier and somehow able to realize it when they’re already half way through or at the end of 20s. Similar like me, I too have just realized it when I have already half way to my 30s. Did I regret it? Yes, I wish I could realize it faster. However, it’s just a regret. It’s never too late to achieve something in life. The most important thing is to never lose the motivation of improving your life. I try to remain grateful with what I already achieved, start from the small things, and planning for greater things to make your future self proud of yourself.

Your age and body grows faster than your mind. Although that doesn’t necessarily happen to everyone. Some children are sometimes quite mature than what they actually look like. If you observe your surrounding, you may find adults who have the minds of children or the minds of teenagers. That actually happens to me. I have the adult body however, my mental mind is still thinking that I’m still at my teenager age. It feels like my mind doesn’t want to accept me turning into an adult. After I did some search, the truth is many people actually experiencing the same thing. I guess it’s a normal behavior caused by the childhood mindset that we are not able to let it go.

People have been put expectation to us since we were born and they will put more as we continue to grow. When we were still a children, we were expected to be able to do the basic things of human being such as walking, eating, speaking, making a friend, studying and other things that most children able to do. From the 20s and so on, as we grow and becoming an adult, people put more expectation for you. We are expected to choose and decide the type of life we want to live. That means, the future we will create depends on what we decide in this early moment. Those people expect us to have a successful life as an adult.

To be a successful person doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be a rich person. Being happy and stay healthy in life also one of the success form. Each person define “success” differently. So, you and I may have different kind of success criteria. As for me, I tend to find the successful life balance between money, happiness and healthiness. I don’t want to be a rich person by sacrificing the other two elements. Well-balanced life is what I pursue in order to gain successful life as an adult.

Messages to my future self

A quarter century life is a quite long journey. As I walked in the journey of life, I found things that I particularly found useful to be reminded again and again as advices for my future self.

Dear the future me, I created this list to remind you again and again in your continuation life journey.

1. Stop worrying about your career. It’s just a work and you’re easily replaceable to others. Focus on the goals you want to achieve in life and use the career as a support system to achieve that goal.
2. Prioritize and put more effort for your physical and mental healths over work. Once again, it’s just a work. Your physical and mental healths are more important. Please don’t overwork.
3. It’s okay not to be okay. People were not created to be a perfect. Life sometimes get overwhelming and often we’re feeling down, having mental breakdown and getting unproductive moment. That is okay. It’s part of human nature to feel like that. Everyone has flaws and always making mistakes. The important thing is to get yourself back to the game again.
4. Pick a good friend or partner that always supports yourself in no matter what circumstances you are in. Having small and supporting friends is better than having a lot of friends whose only take advantage of yourself and don’t really care about your being. Always be grateful if you have those connections.
5. Please save and investing your money in investment instrument to save your money from inflation rate and to improve your passive income. When investing money, please split it into multiple investment and don’t put everything in one basket .
6. Keep some money as emergency fund. You never know when you will need quick money. One way to calculate the emergency fund is (your monthly expenses x 6 months) to ensure you have 6 months of emergency fund.
7. Plan your retirement as early as possible. You don’t want to work forever, do you? Having many possible passive income from investment and business is a one way to plan and support your early retirement.
8. Put more effort on improving your life skills. Your life skills are the skills that always last longer. Even after you have retired you still need those skills for living.
9. Be an optimist person. Your life can be changed into the way you want if you’re optimist enough. Put more effort to improve your life quality to enjoy the life after retirement.

Dear future me, you may find one of item from the list is outdated. If that’s the case, please don’t forget to update this list.

Closing

The first quarter of my life is a memorable moment that I need to put my thought into this writing. I want to note this exact moment so I can reread again someday in the future. I know 20s is a really crucial moment in our life however I don’t really want to make myself and you the reader to be really hard to yourself. Just be a yourself, everyone has their own pace of growth. You’re unique because it’s you not someone else. Also, keep being an optimist even though 20s has become your past. It’s never too late to change and improve your life to be better.

I am really grateful with everyone who is reading and reaching this section. While this post is mostly talking about my personal life, I hope you get any useful information from it. Many thanks and see you next time.